Sharon Richardson

Can anyone tell me if there is anyone by the name of Skivelton (skifelton or any other similar name) buried in this cemetary.

16-Jul-2010

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B Hallam

Sharon, I believe there is a group known as 'Friends of Beckett Street Cemetery' who might be able to help you locate the grave you seek.

20-Jul-2010

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Les Deighton

Hello Sharon, I have a CD of the buriels at Beckett Street Cemetery and there is a entry for a Mary Skivington a child grave number 19784,she died in 1876 if this helps. The Yorkshire Indexers Site could be of more help to you. Les Deighton.

16-Jan-2011

lwd42@hotmail.com

Joanne Carter

My great great grandmother Emma Carter is buried in a Guinea grave number 7235.

09-Feb-2011

joanne.carter@roadways.co.uk

ALUN PUGH

I am the chairman of the Cemetery Friends [as June 2013] Should you require information contact me on my email address

28-May-2013

a.apugh@ntlworld.com

B Hallam

Throughout the 1940's and up until the middle 1950's, as one of a gang of the local street urchins, this cemetery was our playground - climbing over its high stone wall of course ... using the lodge gates risked getting caught. But this wasn't my only connection with the cemetery as my Dad frequently worked there adding new memorials to the gravestones. Unlike most cemeteries, Beckett Street Cemetery - the first Municipal cemetery in the country, wasn't then too dissimilar to how it is today. Its tree-lined nature, and maze like paths snaking through a hundred-years of nature's prolific dominance, gave it an adventurous lure to us children. Being chased off was just part of the fun. That it is largely now being left to that ultimate dominance of nature, is to me, quite fitting. Created on land bought from the Beckett family in 1840, it is a Leeds' treasure little known of by most people. Along with what remains of the original St. James's Hospital buildings, they are the only remnants of the Beckett Street that was my childhood, teenage, and adult environment, until 1965 when the wreckers flattened it.

18-Jun-2013

barry.hallam2@ntlworld.com

John Bean

I visited the cemetery only recently with the vague intention of finding my paternal great grandfathers grave. On arrival I realised just how large and how numerous the headstones were here. Within a few yards I found the monumental gravestone of my maternal gt,gt grandfather and gained a great deal of info from it. A little later I decided to look amongst the guinea graves, most are in reasonable date order as it was worth eliminating those first,in my remaining quest. Some 20 mins later I had a photo of the gravestone of my initial search. I would recommend to those searching for ancestors to look at these guinea graves in whichever cemetery, as later in the week I found another relative in the old Leeds cemetery gravestone footpath at woodhouse , now the University park.

20-Jul-2013

beanj@btinternet.com

Jacko

This graveyard is divided into two halves each with its own chapel.The lower half was consecrated ground for the Church of England whilst the upper half was for the use of dissenters and was unconsecrated.

09-Aug-2015

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John Bean

08/09/15. I was at the cemetery only yesterday, to locate a ancestors gravestone. I noticed that since my previous visit around 2 years ago there are a large number of these Guinea headstones leaning much further. Sadly there was a notice from the council. Indicating that they are to inspect all headstones soon, in order to take down or lay down those recorded as unsafe or unstable. The sad part is most of the Guinea graves are engraved front and back, so laying them down would hide 50% of those interred. I hope this doesn't occur as it did at the Woodhouse cemetery, where paths were made of these style headstones and locating any ancestors has now become limited. If you know the headstone number locating is not as difficult as you would imagine, however there are a number of the guinea headstones already missing from these relatively tidy rows. Yorkshire Indexers, who photograph and record inscriptions of Churchyards and Cemeteries have undertaken to record these here, including GPS recording of the positions.They do a wonderful job and have a website available to those searching ancestors resting places. One would not imagine how the inscription can offer significant information. The headstone I wanted to photograph, indicated that my family member lost his 2 month old son , then his wife, then he himself within a 10 day period of December 1922. We in the city of Leeds owe much to the Victorian era and as many of these cemetery residents are from that era, we owe them some respect in ensuring we preserve their memory.

08-Sep-2015

beanj@btinternet.com

ALUN PUGH

As the chairman of the Friends group feel free to email me should you require any help

07-Oct-2015

a.apugh@ntlworld.com

on Smith

My brother Trevor is buried in one of these graves, he contracted a skin infection soon after he was born in 1935, he only lived four month's. To day he would have been given 'antibiotic's would have survived. I remember walking up to the grave from Burley Road with Mam and Dad to place flowers on the grave.

28-Aug-2016

anne-donsmith@shaw.ca

Heather Fisher

My father Joe Walker for a time due to unemployment in the winter of 1953 I believe, was temporarily unemployed and had to go look for a job at the local Labour Exchange. Apparently he walked in and asked what jobs they had available, the one he was offered was a grave digging job at Burmantoft cemetery OR as is known (Beckett Street). I guess dignity played a part in his choice (or as he put it, he had no choice), as he had a wife, young son and another (me) on the way. So middle of winter my dad dug graves to put food on the table. A couple of tales he used to tell us kids (things that happened, whilst re-opening graves). One was when they miscalculated how many were in this grave, he swung his pick and ended up with a rather unpleasant surprise on the end (a skull). Another was a tale about a coffin that had a glass panel over the head part of the coffin. My dad and another person were re-opening the grave for another burial, when they both came across this unusual coffin apparently with the glass panel, it totally freaked this other man, who quickly did the sign of the cross, muttered three hail Mary's and God bless me, and promptly legged it never to return. Those are just two of the stories he told me as a child, even so they would send shivers down my spine as a youngster.

12-Dec-2016

bruyere2@ntlworld.com

ALUN PUGH

As chairman of the cemetery friends we are always on the look out for information, stories, photographs that we can add to our website. Please contact me to locate family graves or for any other enquiry

22-Aug-2018

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ALUN PUGH

Please contact me...chairman of the Cemetery Friends...should you require any help finding relatives. Also...do you have photographs of relatives buried there?

08-Oct-2018

a.apugh@ntlworld.com

B Hallam

As I made evident in my earlier comments, through both my 1940's and 50's childhood familiarity with this cemetery as a playground, and through my late father carving memorials on many of the headstones, it holds many memories for me. I don't know why, but I have long had a fascination for cemeteries, and used to seek them out wherever I happened to have ventured around our country. Ancient churchyard cemeteries have had a particular fascination for me, but in no way do those compare to the likes of Beckett Street Cemetery that tell different stories altogether, the grim stories of life and death in Britain's once disease ridden industrial cities. Whilst it now only remains as a living memorial of that once awful reality, Beckett Street is far from alone. Cemeteries hosting Guinea headstones exist everywhere. But to me, there is a story that they don't tell. Take those we see here in the photograph, scores of them amounting to hundreds of names, in fact, too many names. Where were all those bodies really buried? It simply could not have been where their monumental memorials suggest. So what was that grim reality..??

27-Oct-2019

barry.hallam2@ntlworld.com

ALUN PUGH

No coffins Barry

07-Nov-2019

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B Hallam

Thank you Alan Pugh, that makes sense of course, but with respect, it doesn't fully answer my question. In large part, my question comes from the evidence presented by these photos of guinea graves, and the ones in such as Killingbeck cemetery known there as 'Inscription only'. There are guinea graves in Holbeck Cemetery, as always - lined up like soldiers, of which some are inscribed on both sides with up to 36 names. I have always understood that the 'Guinea' paid was only for the memorial inscription, a provision to record the passing of the life, and provide a specific place for mourners to go. I can assume a feasible answer to my own question, at least regarding the sheer number of these headstones as we now see them, in that at some time, they were likely moved and lined up in such close proximity to save space. The burial of so many in such small plots simply isn't feasible if the headstones mark the actual place of internment. Did cremation play a part in the process? What happened before the likes of Beckett Street (Municipal) Cemetery were created in the 1840's, when cemeteries were either private or church..?? I don't get around much anymore, so I don't know if they are still there, but I remember all the headstones that were laid on the railway embankment on New York Street ... a mass memorial of Leeds' many plagues (typhus, smallpox, etc), but none of them an actual grave.

10-Nov-2019

barry.hallam2@ntlworld.com